


petals coming up his throat like hell's flames burning him from the inside out.

by kocampo



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Crying, Everyone Is Gay, Hanahaki Disease, Hospitals, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Longing, M/M, Major Illness, OR IS IT, Pain, Reverse Hanahaki Disease, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27327823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocampo/pseuds/kocampo
Summary: iizuna tsukasa, itachiyama's setter and captain coughs up flowers and blood. it's all sakusa's fault for falling in love for someone he could never have - or is it? throw suna rintarou,a dead-eyed medtech student who just wants data for his thesis, into the mess, though, and things get a little more complicated. a look into the origins of reverse hanahaki disease, whose fault really is, and why.Haikyuu Angst Week 2020
Relationships: Iizuna Tsukasa/Sakusa Kiyoomi, Iizuna Tsukasa/Suna Rintarou
Kudos: 15
Collections: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020





	1. Iizuna Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starshineofmine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starshineofmine/gifts).



> happy reading!
> 
> kudos and constructive criticism appreciated <

Nothing is worse than being alone and seeing everyone else paired up, in their own little groups, and you are the odd one out.

Iizuna isn't too familiar with this feeling, honestly. He's never been much of a loner - people seemed to almost gravitate to him like iron filings to a magnet. His table was never empty during lunchtime, and in his third year, he had been the overwhelming choice for Itachiyama's captain. Natural charisma, his parents called it. Physics class had been the one thing he hadn't slept through in his second year, watching electrons orbit around the neutron. Iizuna couldn't claim to be a physics expert, but it was a little bit similar to how people acted around him. If he was the neutron and his classmates the electrons, then the Junior Olympic Best Setter award was the force keeping them close by. 

His locker never went without a love letter or two, and he was more than well-liked - not loved, but something similar. Though, Iizuna knew better than to think of any of those things as permanent; without his setting, his status in Itachiyama would be nothing more than surreptitious looks in the hallway and trophies collecting dust on his shelves.

Still, being alone wasn't something that was on his mind much. Iizuna was in his third year, and Itachiyama had just won nationals. Let everyone else talk - they aren't the ones walking on stage to accept their gold medals. 

It's not the first time that Itachiyama won nationals, far from it, but it's the first time that they've won with Captain Iizuna Tsukasa at the reins, and he starts crying out of sheer joy and the adrenaline rush. He contemplates biting the medal just to check if it’s real, but he spots Sakusa out of the corner of his eye and he is all too quickly jolted back to his senses.

No. Iizuna is not going to bite the medal, or else he will lose his ace’s respect forever. He settles for watching the way it glints under the blinding spotlights of Tokyo’s Orange Gym, rubbing his calloused fingers against the embossed design. 

On the way out, he runs into Kita Shinsuke and his entourage. Inarizaki’s captain grabs Atsumu’s collar as he opens his mouth to say something no doubt stupid, and they walk on past. Just to be an asshole, his brain still high on adrenaline, he mutters under his breath, “That statement earlier about foxes eating weasels in the wild aged like fresh milk in the sun, Kita-chan.”

  
The even set of Kita’s mouth twitches ever so slightly, but he doesn’t pause in his walking at all, so Iizuna doesn’t push his luck and makes his way to Itachiyama’s bus.

He sinks gratefully into the plush seats, sighing as he turns up the air conditioner. Iizuna falls in and out of sleep, but the one constant in his dreams is a sun that glows like national’s gold. 

It’s not the first time that Itachiyama’s gym floor has seen its athletes collapsing from sheer exhaustion, but, Iizuna thinks just as his face meets the floor, it must be a first to not even make it across the threshold. The last thing he registers before the world around him goes black is the burning sensation in his throat. 

Iizuna wakes up with rough fabric scratching his skin, nearly blinded by white light. The pain searing his throat from earlier has numbed, but so has the rest of his body. He can’t move a thing.

“Iizuna-san. You’re awake now?”

“Sakkun? S’that you?” he murmurs. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth. The white light above him is burning his eyes.

“..yes. Yes, it’s me.”

“What happened to me?”

When Iizuna doesn’t hear anything, he blinks tears out of his burning eyes to look at Sakusa standing near the white-washed wall, his jaw muscles working furiously as he stares out of the window in the distance.

“Sakkun, what happened to me?” he asks again.

Sakusa fists the fabric of his track jacket - Iizuna winces at the neon - before letting go slowly. “You have hanahaki disease. It’s me. I’m the one who-.”

Bile rises up again in Iizuna’s throat, along with something that feels like cotton but isn’t. He blacks out again, with a burning in his throat and heart that no painkiller could quench.

When he comes to, he’s alone. Iizuna grips the sides of his head until it hurts, the words, “You have hanahaki disease.” bouncing around his head like bubbles on a screensaver.

Hanahaki disease. An affliction wherein a person coughed up flowers that grew in their respiratory if they couldn't return the love given to them by someone else. If left alone for too long, it caused irreparable damage to the lungs.

Iizuna cries again, but for a very different reason, tears burning as he let them fall.

Being born in a big family, Iizuna had almost never been alone in his life. Even going into high school, he was popular enough to never be lonely. But this feeling of being alone - the fear that no one would hear you if you screamed your lungs out - spreads all over him until he's shivering under the thick, rough hospital bed sheets. He turns on his side to stare out of the big window down at the busy streets of Tokyo, and wonders if after all this, he'll have a life to go back to. If whatever "this" is will ever end. Iizuna looks outside the window, determinedly not noticing the tears still falling down his cheeks, until he falls asleep on a wet pillow.


	2. Nothing Is Forever

Not for the first time in his life, Sakusa has no idea what to say. Awkwardly, he puts down the gift baskets his parents had told him it was customary to bring for this kind of thing, and slowly makes his way towards the hospital bed.

He forces himself to start breathing again. In the science classes he’d often slept off, it had been hammered into his head that breathing was an involuntary action - you couldn’t voluntarily stop breathing, because your body would instinctively make you start breathing again. No matter how much your brain wanted to die, your body would fight tooth and nail to keep you alive.

Right now, though, this hospital room made him feel like a weight was in his chest, squeezing his heart whenever it beat.

It’s spacious, not the kind of place that would make you feel suffocated. A big window on the side overlooked the busy streets of Tokyo - something he had thought that the unmoving boy in the bed would like. Now, he’s not so sure. Does it now serve only as a reminder of what he’s lost? The life he can’t live because of Sakusa?

He takes a step forward, and cringes at how loud it sounds in the silence. Usually, he likes the quiet. He wants quietness while he’s studying. Quietness from the crowds during his serves. But the lack of noise in the white-walled room was more deafening than any noise Sakusa could think of.

It felt like, if he slowed his breathing enough, Sakusa could hear himself crying.

Slowly, he made his way to the hospital bed, pulling back the covers with the bare tips of his fingers. Iizuna looked almost undead. Over a week of being cooped up in the hospital had done him no favors; his already thin frame accentuating the bones. 

Sakusa couldn’t even hear him breathing.

Almost as if in a trance, he reached out to touch Iizuna’s hand. Carefully, like he was handling a porcelain doll, he opened his palm from when it was curled into a fist.

He runs the pad of his finger across his palm, Iizuna’s calluses from playing volleyball having smoothed out, leaving his hands pale and slightly wrinkled. 

“Iizuna-san, this is all my fault.”

Sakusa cuts himself off before he says something else. His hands fist the sheets as he silently reprimands himself for allowing meaningless selfpity to be the first thing he says to a person whose life he ruined. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

For a second, he lets himself exhale. Even though he personally thought that sorries were useless, overdone, and cliche - why waste people’s time with meaningless apologies when you could make whatever you’d done wrong right, after all? - he thought maybe Iizuna-san would appreciate it.

“Iizuna-san, can you hear me?”

  
“It’s only been a week, Sakkun. I’m stronger than you think.” Iizuna smiled warmly up at him, his eyes losing none of the light in them even after Sakusa ruined his entire life. “Though maybe not strong enough to go back to playing quite yet.” He laughs loudly like it’s just a stupid joke, like he isn’t dying slowly. 

Sakusa doesn’t notice he’s crying until the lukewarm tear drips off his cheek. 

“Was it that last thing I said?” Iizuna shifts up into a sitting position, coughing briefly. He doesn’t miss the way Sakusa flinches briefly. “I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have made it seem to be less serious than it is.”

“I don’t know, Iizuna-san. I have no idea why I’m like this.” Sakusa quietly sobs. “It’s nothing you did. It’s all my fault.”

He stays silent as he raises his hand slowly. “Hey, Sakkun? Do you mind if I touch your face?”

“...no. Not for too long, though,” Sakusa mumbles as Iizuna cups his cheek, gently wiping his tears. 

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly as Iizuna let go of his face. 

“You’re fine. Don’t be sorry for having personal boundaries.”

“...okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“...okay, captain.”

  
“Good boy.” Iizuna reaches up to pat Sakusa’s curls, but pulls back at the last second. Sakusa takes Iizuna’s hand, slowly placing it on his head. 

“Sakkun, did you want head pats?” 

Sakusa doesn’t even need to look up from the ground to know that Iizuna’s holding back a grin. In the hopes that he’ll take the hint without Sakusa needing to talk and possibly say something stupid, he holds Iizuna’s wrist again and pats it up and down on his own head.

Iizuna laughs, then, and suddenly the hospital room feels just a little bit warmer than before - or maybe it’s just Sakusa’s face heating up. 

“Your hair is really fluffy,” Iizuna comments, laughter still in his voice as he plays with his curls, “are the rumours that you’re the one using that expensive conditioner in the locker room true?”

Sakusa blushes even harder, directing his gaze firmly at the ground.

  
Iizuna’s hands come to a stop in his hair, and he slowly whispers, “Oh my god. Sakkun, you are so cute when you’re pouting. Please stay this way forever.”

“That’s not possible, Iizuna-san.” Sakusa finally says, having gotten his red face back under control. “There isn’t anything in this world that lasts forever.”

“Well, if I could choose something that would last forever, I don’t think I’d mind being with you like this forever.” 

“Iizuna-san, you can’t just say things like that.”

“And why not?” 

“It’s not good for my heart. I-” Sakusa faltered as someone knocked on the door. 

  
“Visiting hours are over now.”

He blinked, slowly getting off the bed (wait, when had he climbed on it?). “I’ll be there in a bit.”

Sakusa pulled on his jacket, pilfering an aloe vera hand sanitizer from the bedside table. “I was running out of them anyway!” he hastily explains when he catches Iizuna’s amused gaze.

“Will I be seeing you again tomorrow, Sakkun?”

“...I don’t know yet, Iizuna-san. But I’ll visit whenever I can. Please rest well. Someone in your condition shouldn’t be too active. And- and--”

  
“Hey.” Iizuna interrupted. “I’ll be okay, Sakkun. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t say things you aren’t sure of.”

“I am. I promise I’ll still be here when you come back.”

“O-okay.”

“Go home now, Sakkun. It’s getting late.” Iizuna gently pushes him towards the door. “Stay safe.”

  
“...you too, Iizuna-san.”

* * *

It finds a place in his routine over time - this weird, unlabeled non-relationship he had with Iizuna. The awkwardness fades after the second week, and soon, Sakusa is actually looking forward to going to see him.

Sakusa isn’t happy to be here this time, though, and it would be obvious to anyone, even if they didn’t have Iizuna’s almost disturbing intuition. 

Iizuna peered under Sakusa’s bangs. “Sakkun, look at me, please. Is something on your mind?” 

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled, slumping down even further.

“Don’t lie to me. It’s not nothing. I can’t make you tell me anything, but I’m just… I want to help, if I can.”

“Iizuna-san, please, you’re the one who’s sick.”

“But do you really have to remind me of it every time I show some concern for you?!”

  
“I’m sorry.” Sakusa says, his voice barely above a whisper as he gets up to leave. “Please don’t be angry at me. I’m scared for you, really scared for what might happen to you after I leave. Today’s the last time we’re going to see each other, and I wanted to at least be able to go with a smile like you said you always wanted to, but I ruined it all.”

Iizuna’s hands shake like dead leaves in the autumn wind; he grabs his sleeve desperately. “Don’t tell me… you’re the one who asked me not to leave, but you’re leaving me alone now?”

  
“I don’t have a choice. Your parents… your parents think it’s hopeless and they’ve decided that the only thing left to try is distance therapy. I'm going to Madrid; coach has contacts there willing to take me on in terms of volleyball.”

“Are they sure there isn’t another bullshit remedy from some quack that they can make me force down my throat?” 

Neither of them laugh.

“I-”

“You don’t need to say anything more, Sakkun. I guess this is kind of my own fault too, in a way. We both knew we never really had that much time together. But for what it’s worth,” Iizuna covers Sakusa’s shaking hands with his own, “I haven’t lost hope that we could be happy together. Just not in this life.”

“This is goodbye.”

“For now.” 

“Yeah… for now.” Sakusa says softly. He doesn’t look back as he walks out the door. If he had, perhaps he would have caught the pained look on Iizuna’s face as he slapped a hand over his mouth to hide the fully formed, bloody forget-me-not flower head protruding from his mouth.


	3. The Arrival of Suna Rintarou

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> suna at last!!

Even before the chuupet, before the hand holding, before the fucking /kisses/ - Suna should have known that walking into Iizuna Tsukasa's hospital room would be the biggest mistake he'd ever make.

No. Before that, even. Suna should have known that choosing hanahaki of all things as his final thesis topic would be the biggest mistake he would ever make. But oh well, it had been 11:25pm, he had been high off caffeine and desperation, and he had been lucky enough to stumble across a topic with little to no conclusive research done on it. Who was he to turn down the oppurtunity, as disgustingly romantic as it might seem?

It had seemed like a good decision to make at first. Researching hanahaki had been more fun than he'd thought, and soon Suna had become genuinely invested in finishing his research. Invested enough to while away his volunteer hours at one of Tokyo's best hospitals, a good four hours away from his home in Hyogo; all based off of a single fleeting rumor of a hanahaki patient in his final stages. 

With a little ferreting, Suna had soon found out his name. Iizuna Tsukasa. Room 508. To his interest, he'd noted that Iizuna was a volleyball player from Itachiyama Institute - the same school that had knocked Inarizaki down to second place at the summer national tournament. Briefly, he wondered if he should ask Kita-san or Osamu about him, but he quickly squished the thought. He'd invaded Iizuna's privacy enough, he thought a little pityingly.

Still, he was curious. What had prompted Iizuna to go through all the extra pain of letting the disease progress to its final stages?`  
Even after several weeks interning at Tokyo Saiseikai Central Hospital, he still hadn’t found a conclusive answer - mainly because he had immediately been flooded with work and given no time to investigate for his thesis. He had had to resort to paying another intern out of his already empty pockets to take on some of his load. 

Nervously, Suna fiddled with the plastic rings on his binder as he stared down the door plate emblazoned with 508.

Iizuna was something similar to an urban legend - apparently, since last spring, no one had visited him at all. Money came in for his bills every month, but no family or friends ever showed up. 

The door creaked as Suna opened it, making him cringe. After taking a moment to admire the view from the huge bedside window - perhaps this Iizuna guy was more loaded than he’d thought, after all - he walked towards the unmoving bundle of sheets, gingerly poking it. “Uh. Hey. Are you alive in there?”

He mentally slapped himself over the head. What kind of idiot said that kind of thing to a hanahaki patient who’s dying? “It’s against hospital protocol to leave corpses in for more than thirty minutes, ruins the aseptic environment, you see. Oh my fucking God. You are alive.”

Mussed strawberry blonde hair and dark eyes peeked out from under the sheets. “Yeah, alive and kicking,” he says slowly in a raspy voice resembling dried, crackly flowers. “Maybe I’m not in the condition to be doing much kicking, though. So, who are you? The usual doctors don’t come in until six-thirty, and you look too young to be out of college yet. A volunteer, then?”

Iizuna rattles it all off quickly, making Suna swallow down a lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. He was sharper than he’d thought.

“Am I?”

“Did- did I say that out loud?” 

“Yes. Yes you did,” Iizuna laughs, “I’ve been told that a lot before. Well. Before my diagnosis.”

It’s obvious that Iizuna’s been left behind like a piece of fruit shoved into the back of the fridge to rot, but Suna can’t stop himself from admiring him. He’s pretty. So, so pretty that Suna has to shove his hands into his pockets to keep from tucking the long tufts of hair falling into his face behind his ear. And smart too, if his deduction from earlier had proven anything.

“You haven’t told me your name yet, but you probably know mine. Isn’t that unfair?” Iizuna comments, voice soft like the gentle rustle of wind against leaves.

Suna furiously fights down a blush as he realizes he’s been staring for God knows how long. “It’s, uh, Suna. Suna Rintarou.”

“What are you doing in my room, then, Suna Rintarou?” 

“...my thesis is about hanahaki disease,” he mutters quickly under his breath, looking anywhere except at Iizuna, “and I need eighty more volunteer hours before I can graduate.”

“What was that?” Iizuna asks, an amused smile tilting up his lips.

Suna repeats it with a blush tinting his cheeks, and Iizuna laughs hard, looking at him in a way that Suna knew was too intimate for two people that had just met. 

Iizuna keeps laughing, a great, side-splitting belly laugh that turns into a dry cough. Suna doesn’t say anything as Iizuna coughs up forget-me-nots into the trash can, retching as he wipes his lips with an embroidered handkerchief.

“Sorry you had to see that,” he says quietly, picking at his nails nervously.

Suna responds, “I’ll be seeing similar stuff every day when I graduate,” and then winces at how cold it sounds.

“So, your thesis, huh?” Iizuna says in a hoarse voice reminiscent of dry, crackly flowers. “Ask any questions you want. I could use the company.” He reaches over to take Suna’s hand and squeezes it weakly.

“Oh my god,” he mumbles under his breath, sitting down on the hard little bedside chair as he squeezes his folder. “Thank you. I- thank you so much.”

“Are hanahaki patients in low supply these days?”

“Patients in the final stages are,” Suna responds immediately, shrinking back into his seat when he realizes, “...wait. Were you making a joke?”

“Sort of?” Iizuna shrugs.

“...you’re not very good at it.” Suna mutters.

“I am very funny! I tell the best jokes!”

* * *

Iizuna eyes the chuupet suspiciously. “Are you sure I can eat this?”

Suna nods vigorously. “Yes! I did so much research last night just to see if chuupet could become a viable part of your eating regimen, you would not believe it.”

“I can, trust me,” he says dryly, poking at Suna’s eyebags. “Do you even sleep anymore or are you preparing for an all-natural raccoon cosplay?”

“No, I’m not. Now please, eat it. I had to sneak that in through hospital security.”

“Um. How do you even open this?” Iizuna turned it around slowly, inspecting it for an opening.

“...you really were born rich, Iizuna-san.”

“Please just shut up and open it for me.”


End file.
